This week we explored the topic of ‘elders’. Where have our elders gone? Why don’t we listen to the generations that have come before us? Do we need to recreate the future elders within ourselves and if so, what paths do we walk to facilitate this?
What is an elder to you and when, in your life, did you need an elder or mentor to guide you?
Every participant believed that they needed an elder throughout their lives and especially at different crossroads; finishing school, uni, starting a family, etc. But what is an elder from our point of view?
Someone with compassionate integrity, insight, someone who facilitates a forgotten listening, passes down a lineage of wisdom, provides a compass, a space to be listened to and accepted, someone who is curious and maintains a wild humanity.
Why do I and perhaps the younger generations not listen to their elders in the same way we may have long ago?
Technology has replaced the oral traditions of passing down understandings. The oral traditions of passing down information were dynamic and open, for it was not so much about the words but about using the words to activate an understanding. So that the next generation can use their own words and different context to pass on the understanding to the next emerging generation.
Due to writing down perennial knowledge and wisdom, the context from which it was created has long disappeared and the understanding has been lost within a multitude of interpretations of the text, unfortunately used in a lot of cases for power and control by institutions. No one from the context is alive to teach us the true meaning of what the words are illustrating. This is a tragedy. The oral traditions lead to a natural respect for the generations before us and kept ancient knowledge and wisdom grown over thousands of years of listening within the dynamic, living vehicle of spoken word. This enabled knowledge to travel across a multitude of changing languages and contexts over years and provided the necessity to listen to your elders. Which in turn created a natural hierarchy and structure within the human ecosystem. The elders held the wisdom, had many more years to build their understanding of universal laws and nature itself, and naturally had the last word upon disputes, rites and challenges faced by the community.
Now the lineage of wisdom has been broken by the dependence upon technology to hold it for us. This has ruptured our human ecosystem, gradually removing our reliance upon listening and respecting our elders, to learning from static texts controlled by centralised authorities; schooling systems, governments, publishers, tech companies, etc.
We have been drained of the responsibility to mentor each other with the compartmentalisation of education. This has not only narrowed the scope of education but has placed huge amounts of pressure upon the system; 30 kids to one mentor/teacher, delivering sub-par regurgitated information with little to no understanding, just the practice of memorisation. What the fuck have we done?
Learning a static interpretation of the world has developed a seperate reality. One of ideas, knowledge, identities, expectations, social status, form identity, ego, etc. Leaving another debatably more real; one of essence that can only really be accurately described through story, metaphor, creativity, listening to the full spectrum of our senses and interacted with solely within the present. This reality is experienced via the present and exists as a relationship with everything.
An exercise that illustrates this is introducing ourselves as a river and comparing this to introducing ourselves in the regular format; career, age, hobbies etc. Give it a go and see which one paints a more connective and holistic understanding.
This matrix of ideas dominates our reality, has tricked us into ridding ourselves for the need for elders and the oral traditions. What do we do now? How do we walk a path that will shape us into elders once again?
There is and has been a natural rebellion to this static and enforced reality. From the highly compliant 50’s we have rolled into the counter-culture and into further rebellion with punk and now we have a high percentage of the population unlikely to believe or listen to our centralised authorities. Naturally we are searching for the source of true wisdom once again, at a point in which we are so overloaded with passive information and knowledge.
It seems the first step to becoming an elder is to take responsibility back. Re-wild ourselves by learning through first hand experience and question every piece of secondhand knowledge that is exposed to us.
A wild human is one who learns through first hand experience primarily.
A domesticated human is one who learns through second hand knowledge primarily.
A domesticated human listens to authority, the mainstream media and casts their world view to the responsibility of these institutions. These humans live primarily within the matrix of ideas and seek the life outside of themselves as they have cast their internal life/essence aside, giving their wild soul away to the powers that be. With every piece of responsibility given away develops a vulnerability to fear and are then subject to persuasion via the manipulation of their fear response. Directly relative to their lack of personal experience of the world or the power they give it.
A wild human learns through the full spectrum of their senses, gaining dynamic universal laws through the observation of patterns across a wide range of experiences. They are not held back or limited by knowledge, logic or reason but always act upon the possibility, intuition, their bodies communications and their imagination. This enables them to live primarily within the reality of essence. They are inherently impossible to define as they are fluid beings, easily moving from a playful child to a focused craftsman, they are capable in many contexts. As one participant in the group said, an elder is fluent in connection, able to transform to their ever-changing context, open to listening, and unrestricted by form identity.
Our souls have been rebelling for years, whilst whispering a realignment with nature and our nature. Our mono-cultured inner landscapes have developed an emptiness inspiring an unending anxiety and thirst for life and sadly this has created our mass human entity as a cancer upon the earth, feeding upon the life that is left until there is no life at all.
So what is this lesson we are learning, this evolutionary challenge of empire, second hand knowledge matrices, the loss of eldership and the lineage of wisdom?
Perhaps we have been given the gift of objectivity via a great and dangerous separation. We see where we belong and we return with qualities we have learnt from this great journey away from ourselves.
What qualities? The technology of story; the power of creating a matrix of ideas that can develop our actions and shape our being. The need for will, discipline and autonomy. A growing respect and interest for the qualities undermined by this journey of separation.
What is the role of eldership in this movement towards nature?
It is for the elders of today to facilitate the forgotten listening, to listen to the wisdom of the water, earth, fire and air. To practice the art of focus and observation, to build our understanding of the true value and the intelligence of this environment that surrounds us. It seems we must rebuild our ancient knowledge via the lineages that still exist whilst learning from nature itself and perfecting our listening ear, becoming wild humans through the education of first hand experience. Regaining the patterns and dynamic laws of the universe.
Walking this path we must also create a bridge to give access to the younger generations and the humans that are questioning these highways created for us.
On a side note:
When was the last time you walked off the path?
Stepped into the wild chaos of nature and let go?
Thank you
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